Comparative Advantage
Customer Solution Case Study
Your
Business Ally
Overview
Country: United States PubEasy, the Global Publishing e-Marketplace,
Industry: Publishing represents the new standard in e-commerce for the
global bookselling industry. Thousands of booksellers
Customer Profile from over 110 countries spanning North America,
Oxford University Press (OUP) is Europe and Asia are using PubEasy to facilitate access
a department of the University
of Oxford and has presence in
to order placement, order tracking, price, titles and
more than 50 countries around availability data over the Internet with participating
the world. publishers, distributors and wholesalers, more quickly
and cost-effectively. Booksellers with a PubEasy
Business Situation password can directly access any participating Affiliate
Implement the PubEasy web site on the PubEasy network. The service is
Software to enhance OUP-US
supply chain and customer available via the Internet twenty-four hours a day, seven
service for OUP-US wholesale days a week. It is designed to offer web-based customer
and retail bookstore accounts support including real-time order status, shipment
while providing cost savings for tracking, price & availability checks, and electronic
the company. ordering.
Solution
OUP-US used BizTalk Server The goal is to answer the 5 basic customer service
2006 and SQL Server 2005 to questions:
build a high-performance • How much is the book? (Price, including
integration solution between personalized discount)
SAP and PubEasy to support the
new supply chain and customer • Do you have it in stock? (Availability)
service process. • Where is my order? (Order status)
• What’s happening with my backorder?
Benefits (Backorder status)
• Available to the customer 7
days a week/24 hours a • Can I place an order? (Electronic ordering)
day.
• Integrates with retail POS These questions are answered via a set of interfaces
systems and vendor between PubEasy and the OUP-US SAP R/3 system.
fulfilment systems.
• Product called Instant
Response is available for PubEasy is an open system, designed to be linked to any
trade bookstores that do back office operational environment that can meet the
not use Pubnet. necessary API standards.
• Order status and shipment
tracking for orders placed In order to link the PubEasy system to SAP, OUP-US are
via PubEasy and Pubnet
• Industry specific product
required to develop an API that will pass data between
and retail (trade/college) the SAP environment and PubEasy.
bookstores can use it for
many publishers. OUP-US has decided to use BizTalk Server 2006 as the
• Reduce the amount of calls middleware, and choose Comparative Advantage as the
coming into OUP-US Cary implementation partner.
call centre for requests.
Situation Using Pub Easy OUP-US will
“BizTalk Server reduce the amount of calls
freed the developer Oxford University Press is a coming into customer service
department of the University of call center for requests like:
from thinking about Oxford. It furthers the • What is my discount?
the mechanisms University's objective of • Is this title in stock and
excellence in research, available?
and helped to focus scholarship, and education by • What is my price?
on developing and publishing worldwide.
implementing the Processes should be running
OUP USA is the largest continuously as it is critical to
business process university press in the U.S., with process on-line order status
itself. “ a publishing program of some checks in real-time as quickly as
1,300 titles annually. possible.
Driven by a scholarly mission to
disseminate the finest available Solution
scholarship, from both the
United States and around the PubEasy Exchange SOAP Server
world, OUP USA offers engaging API Web Service provides a total
books for young adults, of seven APIs that can be
authoritative monographs for subdivided into two individual
academics and professionals, groups:
textbooks, Bibles for a wide • Upload Services: For
range of denominations, sheet uploading product data to
music, English as a second the PubEasy application.
language, English and bilingual • Processing Services: For
dictionaries, and much more. retrieving and processing
Prior to publication, every OUP orders entered or being able
title undergoes rigorous review to answer order status
by our Board of Delegates, enquiries requested by
comprised of leading scholars. booksellers.
The core areas in which OUP In a data exchange perspective
USA publishes are Academic &
this includes two techniques:
Professional Books, Bibles,
Higher Education, Law, Medical, • Push - Data will be uploaded
Music, Oxford Online, into the PubEasy database
Reference, and School and • Pull - Data will be extracted
Young Adult. from the PubEasy database
OUP-US Customer Service SAP is also an essential part of
receives approximately 95,700 the process, as the Processing
calls each year are for price or Services requires an immediate
availability, status of order and response. It is critical to retrieve
backorder, and shipment data from PubEasy, sent it to
tracking information. SAP for process through BAPIs
PubEasy is for retail and and IDocs, and finally sent the
wholesale customers, which is response back to PubEasy.
60% of these calls (57,400
calls). BizTalk Server is a key part in
this interaction, supporting both
OUP-US Customer Service will synchronous and asynchronous
achieve the most benefit from PubEasy processes.
PubEasy, as it is designed to
offer 24-hour web-based
customer support including real-
time order status, shipment
tracking, price & availability
checks, and electronic ordering.
Interactive Interface (PubEasy Non-Interactive Interface
For More Information
synchronous process). (PubEasy asynchronous
The synchronous process is process).
For more information about started when a user logged into The asynchronous process is a
BizTalk Server and other
PubEasy web application clicks more traditional B2B process
Microsoft products go to:
[Link] a button or a link (creating a In this process, BizTalk
query) and wait for a result. receives files and transform
For more information about A PubEasy user sees this as a those files into SOAP calls,
Oxford University Press go to: synchronous process because which are sent to Pub
[Link] he waits for a response to be Easy, without direct user
or: displayed in a single interaction intervention. This is used to
[Link] and in a matter of seconds. upload data like order updates,
So what happens behind the products and other similar
For more information about curtains to allow this kind of information.
PubEasy go to:
[Link]
interaction?
For specific information about When a user executes an Quality Attributes
PubEasy SOAP Server go to: action (creates a query or an
[Link] order), a record is stored in the Using powerful BizTalk features
PubEasy database and like un-typed messages and
For more information about SAP exposed through the web custom pipeline components, it
go to: service API. was possible to develop a
[Link] BizTalk is continually querying decoupled and modular
PubEasy for those queries or solution.
For more information about orders. The technique used is a
Comparative Advantage go to:
[Link]
group of SQL receive locations Near real time processing
[Link] receives the necessary API provides for business visibility
parameters, each location and agility.
receives the parameters for a
specific API function, and those An effective cost reduction by
parameters are stored in a SQL cutting down incoming calls to
Server database. The received OUP-US‘s contact centre of
parameters are then used to about 50%.
create SOAP requests that are
sent to PubEasy allowing to A very short development cycle
retrieving available data. enabled early and frequent
The data returned from those releases. Only 40 man/days
SOAP calls is transformed into were required to develop a fully
an IDoc or into a SAP BAPI functional solution.
request.
In the case of a BAPI request,
the resulting BAPI response is
transformed and sent back to
PubEasy. That response is then
displayed to the user.
All this will happen in a few
seconds continuously 24/7.
Software and Services Hardware
Microsoft BizTalk Server 1 Server with 1 processors
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 4 Gb of memory
Windows Server 2003 SAN storage system
